Noise permeates biology on all levels, from the most basic molecular, sub-cellular
processes to the dynamics of tissues, organs, organisms and populations. The functional …

Signaling by the transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) family is necessary for proper neural
development and function throughout life. Sequential waves of activation, inhibition, and …

Throughout life, adult organs continually adapt to variable environmental factors. Adaptive
mechanisms must fundamentally differ from homeostatic maintenance, but little is known …

Cell populations can be strikingly heterogeneous, composed of multiple cellular states, each
exhibiting stochastic noise in its gene expression. A major challenge is to disentangle these …

Approximately one in five neurons is GABAergic in many neocortical areas and species,
forming a critical balance between inhibition and excitation in adult circuits. During …

Traditionally, scientific research has focused on studying individual events, such as single
mutations, gene function, or the effect that mutating one protein has on a biological …

Systems biology seeks not only to discover the machinery of life but to understand how such
machinery is used for control, ie, for regulation that achieves or maintains a desired, useful …

Highlights•Cells in tissues operate in structured microenvironments.•Studying division of
labor in tissues requires spatially-resolved transcriptomics.•This is enabled by highly …

© 2012 Lander et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons …

Biomaterials made by living systems, while very diverse, generally share similar
organization: different lineages of cells are precisely patterned within a matrix to create a …